Selecting a cloud business strategy - s3-us-west-2

CANADA'S CHANNEL VOICE FOR IT SINCE 1985

SUPERDOME BECKONSHP's x86 architecture opens up

CISCO DEALS WITH IBM The fierce rivalry is finally over

SAP CEO VIEWPOINTSInternet of Things, talent and more

Selecting a cloud business strategy

PAGE 7

DEC/JAN 2014 | VOLUME 30, ISSUE 10

Plenty of surprises and some new additions to the Top 25 Newsmakers for 2014

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computerdealernews.com December/January 2014 3

E D I T O R I A L :What's your company's cloud business strategy and which one should you adopt? 7

In this special Newsmakers edition of the Channel Quadrant, market leader IBM with its historic partnership with Cisco Systems continues to remain in the Market Leaders quadrant. As for SAP, their chief executive Bill McDermott, who is profiled close up, was able to convince the market that his company is not just about

the large enterprise. We have many market challengers in this edition led by new announcements from HDS and Nutanix. Back to Cisco, its deal with IBM increases its channel commitment, while HP brings Superdome to the channel. In the festive spirit of the holidays, no company is scaling back.

DECEMBER/JANUARY 2014/15 V O L U M E 3 0 , I S S U E 1 0

CONTENTS

C L O S E U P :SAP CEO Bill McDermott on talent, leadership and the Internet of Things 20

N E W S :Cisco and IBM have EMC Corporation and Lenovo set in their sights 4

CHANNEL QUADRANT C H A N N E L C O M M I T M E N T M A R K E T L E A D E R S

S C A L I N G B A C K M A R K E T C H A L L E N G E R S

ABIL

ITY

to D

RIVE

BUS

INES

S

IBM

Page 4

Cisco

Page 4

SAP

Page 18

BlackBerry

Page 14

HP

Page 6

NutanixPage 13

HuaweiPage 15

Avaya

Page 16

HDS

Page 17

TOP 25 NEWSMAKERS 2014

The list of Top Newsmakers of 2014 includes seven fresh faces from Lenovo, IBM, Nutanix, BlackBerry, Cisco, Huawei and even

the RCMP. PAGE 8

December/January 2014 computerdealernews.com4

NEWSANALYSIS & INSIGHT

Cisco partners with rival IBMby DAVE [email protected]

AFTER BEING FIERCE rivals in the data centre market, Cisco Systems and IBM are partners again.

The two technology powers an-nounced a joint integrated infra-structure solution called VersaS-tack which combines the Cisco Unified Computing System, the company’s existing x86 architec-ture data centre server platform with IBM’s Storewize V7000 stor-age system to form a new Cisco Validated Design (CVD). The new VersaStack solution will only be available through channel partners.

This announcement follows Cisco’s recent decision to reduce its ownership stack in VCE to just 10 per cent. According to various sources at the vendor and in the channel community, the network-ing giant is squarely targeting EMC with VersaStack.

But while Cisco’s has EMC in the crosshairs, the Hopkinton, Mass.-based vendor will not be the only competitor for VersaStack. Damian Sergeant, general man-ager of data centre practice for Cisco Canada, told CDN that with IBM selling off its x86 business to Lenovo, Cisco saw a great oppor-tunity to partner with Big Blue. The companies were finally able to announce their plans now that the servers – including the sales people and technical resources – had been officially signed over. It was only

two months ago that Lenovo offi-cially close its $2.1 billion deal with Big Blue for the x86 business.

“Over last four years, we have been selling alongside IBM, which included IBM storage, but there was no true Cisco Validated De-sign or integrated stack between both companies that we would support,” Sergeant said.

With many former IBM x86 channel partners still transitioning from the Lenovo deal, Sergeant believes this may be a market that the new Cisco-IBM partnership intends to recapture.

“For a channel partner before who sold IBM System x and poten-tially V7000, now they’re looking for alternatives,” Sergeant said. He explained that, because of the size of the System x market, not only will Lenovo be going after it, but also HP and Dell.

According to Laura Guio, vice president of business line executive storage systems at IBM, both Cisco and IBM will be offering services for channel partners “whether it’s directly with the client to take services to IBM or Cisco, or a hybrid approach where our chan-nel partners offer those services to their customers and in turn we back with services.”

With Cisco and IBM collabo-rating on sales and marketing for the solution in Canada, the two companies are working closely to determine where to push the solution. For now, Cisco will be

talking about the announcements during its UCS Mini road show this month, Sergeant said.

“In Canada it’s really going to change how we market with IBM. I see tremendous upside opportunity for both organizations.”

Among key advantages that VersaStack aims to offer, Cisco highlighted efficiency, simplified management through having one single pane of glass for the entire computing environment, and in some instances, even a reduced physical footprint.

“Virtualization is one of those key things that I think as a client tries to pull together their IT data centre, this then accentuates some of the value proposition in IBM storage and what it brings to the overall solutions,” Guio said.

Depending on the client’s exist-ing infrastructure, VersaStack can either be brought in through an insertion or built from scratch the similar to Cisco’s Vblock, VCE and NetApp’s FlexPod offerings, Sergeant said, all at an increase of 30 per cent in speed to market.

“For customers that have de-ployed converged infrastructure before, it’s not uncommon for them to say that what took five people before to manage now takes one,” he said. “It makes sense so [customers] can have operational efficiency across their complete stack but then support with one number. I expect that growth to increase with VersaStack.”


N E W S

by PAOLO DEL NIBLETTO@ p a o l o c d n

THERE WAS A time when the advanced technology of HP’s Integrity Superdome X and even the vendor’s Integrity NonStop X technology was out of reach for the channel.

This is not the case any longer for HP, as the company announced the expansion of its Compute line for x86 architectures at the HP Discover conference in Barcelona, Spain. This will include HP Integ-rity Superdome X and NonStop X units.

Jeff Kyle, director of product management for HP Servers, told CDN that previously channel part-ners who had mid-size customers which grew over the last five years and increased their data may have moved to this type of HP solution without them. Now they get to grow along with these customers instead of handing it off to a bigger player.

“It’s what I like about this an-nouncement. Traditional HP UX customers and channel partners, which are an established environ-ment, brings more channel partner into the relationship. It’s all about the ecosystem now. Channel part-ners are going to be able to provide more expertise; sometimes even more than HP and that’s why we are opening it up,” Kyle said.

More customers are doing data

warehousing and real time analyt-ics, which prompted HP to make this kind of a move with Superdo-me. The HP Integrity Superdome X can now blend x86 efficiencies with Linux workloads supporting databases as an example.

Channel partners were once prohibited because of specialized training for advanced technologies such as Superdome.

“Channel partners have grown up on this and can now take part in Superdome because they have the expertise now where they did not have it before. This is what we like. It's standard-based and so some-one who knows Oracle or SQL Server and business intelligence they will get to be a part of this and it expands our opportunity as well,” Kyle said.

HP opens Superdome to the channel

Many of these new partners had to develop business intelligence solutions for customers who were making other choices and therefore the channel invested in Linux, x86 and data centres. “We want these channel partners to take what they know and apply it,” Kyle added.

While this announcement opens up the channel opportunity for HP, Kyle said that the market for Superdome and NonStop will still be mainly for mid-size and up. This announcement was made to strengthen HP’s solutions for mission-critical environments.

“These are workloads specifically for business processing and deci-sion support like ERP, OLTP, core banking where zero downtime is the goal; any downtime costs money and these are very demanding envi-ronments and requires high perfor-mance and scalability,” he said.

For example, Superdome X was designed as a prototype called “Dragon Hawk” for SAP Hana and is able to deliver 12 terabytes of in-memory computing. Superdome addresses data set in-memory in-stead of off disk and this can speed up the decision making process potentially by 10 to 20 times. In the SAP Dragon Hawk prototype SAP witnessed a 1,000 times speed improvement.

Pricing has not been released yet. However, Kyle said that the goal for these products is to de-liver more scalability than other x86 solutions out in the market. “They will be attractively priced for those who are consolidating. These systems will not be priced out of the customers' reach in x86,” he said.

How did CDN arrive at Lloyd Bryant as its No. 1 Newsmaker for 2014?

THE FACT THAT HP decided to split into two separate organizations is a significant factor. This news is arguably the biggest news of the year that impacts the channel. HP’s decision to split results in the creation of two Fortune 100 ven-dors: HP Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Enterprises.

Things still need to play out but since the channel touches practi-cally everything HP produces in Canada this piece of news has the potential to impact more channel partners than any other.

And that’s why Bryant, HP’s chief executive in Canada, reaches the top. He joins his co-worker Leyland Brown and his former boss Paul Tsaparis as CDN Newsmakers of the Year from HP since the Top 25 Newsmakers started in 2001.

How does the HP news compare to that of Lenovo acquiring IBM’s x86 server business and the Mo-torola Mobility unit from Google, which made Jay Parker the No. 2 Newsmaker of the Year?

There is no doubt Lenovo made major news this year, but still, it's

only two business divisions com-pared to hundreds of products with the HP split.

There is one more thing. That is 3D printing, which HP and Bryant in particular are taking an active role in. 3D printing has the poten-tial of dramatically impacting not just business but society as well.

So those are CDN’s reasons for choosing Bryant as the No. 1 News-maker of 2014.

Do you agree? Do you disagree? Email me and let me know. I can be reached at [email protected].

There are seven first time CDN Newsmakers starting with Jay Parker, the president of Lenovo North America and includes IBM global channel chief Marc Du-paquier, Anton Granic, senior director for Nutanix Canada, John Sims, president of BlackBerry Enterprise, Cisco Canada’s David De Abreu, Scott Bradley, a senior vice president at Huawei Canada, and the RCMP for capturing the HeartBleed hacker.

On the outside, Mitchell Martin, president of Synnex Canada did had a good year, but Synnex did not have the big news announce-ments like in 2013's Supercom acquisition. Also, Marcel Escorcio was a big part of a major interna-tional, potentially game changing announcement with HDS.

I hope you enjoy this year’s list of top newsmakers.


OPINIONS ON THE CHANNELEDITORIAL

TWITTERSPHERE

THE EDITOR’S NOTEPAOLO DEL NIBLETTOp d e l n i b l e t t o @ i t w c . c a

#ITWCjobs: IT career progres-sion in CanadaThe skills gap exists across multiple job types. 5 critical areas- SMACS #ITWCjobs IMercerTalent @Mercer_Talent

At Deloitte in our IT Consulting prac-tice we can’t find enough talented people to meet demand #ITWCJobsDeloitteJobsCA @DeloitteJobsCA

Hard Skills: ERP, digital, analytics, SFDC, Agile, Guidewire. Soft Skills: Ability to operate in ambiguityDeloitteJobsCA @DeloitteJobsCA

Combination of tech skills/ business acumen to ensure technologies are effective/ ready for business use MercerTalent @Mercer_Talent

#IT #Training is a shared responsibil-ity. Employee needs to self learn, and request training.Mat Pancha @mpancha

Employers need to understand you can't expect the best without invest-ment in #training.Mat Pancha @mpancha

The word training seems like some-thing the "adults" do TO employees. I prefer creating opportunities for growth and development. Jim Love @CIOJimLove

Newsmakers from top to bottom

CHANNELCORP’S RESEARCH AND experience tells us that the reselling business has six strategic options to select from in making a corpo-rate strategy decision vis a vis their investment in cloud computing and SaaS.

The strategic option that you eventually select will be driven by your corporate strategy heritage and the business skills and experi-ence of your management team. The path you select will be im-pacted by your financial condition and in many cases even the specific characteristic of your service, support, training and consulting business. The sales and marketing talent base of your organization will also impact the option that you select, as will the character-istics of your installed base and management’s propensity to invest in growth. Part of your business planning needs to include a classic strengths, weaknesses, opportuni-ties, threats assessment (SWOT).

Type A: Born traditional reseller - the stay traditional reseller. This is likely to be a slow liquidation strategy unless you are by far the best reseller of on premise software solutions, or printer and toner in your market. This will be a suc-cessful strategy as long as you man-age to build a portfolio of alliances in a rich opportunity laden eco-system populated by key provid-ers of cloud/SaaS solutions. As

cloud/SaaS capabilities become table stakes in your market you will likely be continuously worried about client retention and consid-eration by your installed base even with strong selling and technical alliances in place. Most of the available market data suggest that cloud/IaaS capabilities are likely to become “must have “capabilities for tradition-al sellers of on premise solutions in the next 12-36 months. Be careful with this strategy.

Type B: Born traditional Reseller - complement with cloud/SaaS business. This hybrid strategy is in line with market trends and properly funded and executed will produce a winning corporate strategy based on a traditional software/hardware/pe-ripheral reselling business model. This strategy starts as a maintain strategy focused on client reten-tion driven by lost sale analysis. The original strategy then transi-tions to a growth strategy once the installed base begins to turn towards your cloud/SaaS offerings. Your success in maintaining the cash generation dynamics of your installed base creates reference ac-counts to help acquire new clients, and finances the build up of new cloud/SaaS focused capabilities.

Type C: Born traditional Re-seller - full transition to cloud/SaaS. This is a dramatic business and corporate strategy transi-tion that is executed over a 24 to 36 month period. A plan is

made to harvest and then exit the legacy, transaction-centric on-premise business in order to align the strategy and investment around emerging opportunities in the recurring revenue centric cloud and SaaS marketplace. This is an “all in, bet the company

strategy”(Adobe has done this in the vendor space) that

will win big, or lose big. It all depends on your in-vestment capability (how much, how long) and

execution skills. This is a corporate strategy decision

based on generating return on invested capital and your desire to dramatically increase the value of your business, perhaps for even-tual sale. The capital required to execute this corporate strategy is substantial and it must be both in-telligent and patient. Investment will likely need to come from external sources of debt or equity even though some of the required capital will need to be generated internally by current operating profits and/or by the sale of your on-premise installed base to an-other organization.

As you do your business plan-ning to guide your transition to a recurring revenue future, do your homework. Use you vendors and distributors to seek out other resellers that have begun the transi-tion to make sure you have a clear understanding of where the crucial investments are, how much the sums are and most crucially how long conversion takes.


CLOUD INSIGHTSBRUCE STUART

N E W S

Selecting a cloud business strategy


LLOYD BRYANT, the general manag-er of HP Canada, has a metaphor to describe HP’s blockbuster deci-sion to separate into two organiza-tions. “HP started in a single car garage and now we are moving into a two car garage.”

The Oct. 6 middle-of-the-night announcement by CEO Meg Whit-man to split HP into two separate organizations sent shockwaves throughout the industry even though HP had been operating internally as two distinct business operations for years.

But from a channel perspective, HP’s decision to be two separate companies – sometime in 2015 – has the potential to impact practically every channel partner in Canada because of HP's high reliance on the channel.

Bryant told CDN in an exclusive interview that he is excited about the company’s separation that will create two significant focused companies. He also said the split will increase HP’s overall commit-ment to the channel. “The channel strategy and the separation will allow both companies to accelerate the innovation agenda and that will create more opportunities for the channel,” Bryant said.

The split may have attracted big headlines for HP but that does mean it was the company’s only story for 2014.

Bryant said of his 28 years at HP Canada, 2014 may have been the biggest in terms of the number of innovative products rolled out.

On top of that list is something called “The Machine”. The Ma-chine was created at HP Labs and is that facility’s biggest project to date. The Machine stores data onsite, while indexing it via the cloud. Local apps on the Machine can be shared and distributed in a wireless mesh system making the Machine a learning engine. This Machine is pretty far out there as it uses electrons, photons and ions for computing, communicating and storing data. It can swap out copper wires for lasers a quarter the thickness of human hair. This helps data transmission catch up with processor speed using less energy and in a smaller form fac-tor. With the Machine, HP claims, it can build tomorrow’s cloud for everyone.

“The Machine is not a current offering but it will fundamen-tally change computing and bring unprecedented levels of perfor-mance,” Bryant said.

Also in 2014 HP took 3D print-ing to another level with its Multi-Jet 3D Fusion technology. Bryant called MultiJet 3D Fusion a break-through at HP because it leveraged all of the company’s intellectual property in the printing space and it has the potential to transform the way 3D printing is done today.

“Imagine if you go to a dental of-fice to get a tooth replaced and the Dentist can take a picture of the tooth, do a 3D replacement and

have it made right there? The pos-sibilities are endless,” he said.

According to Bryant, 3D printing can impact business and society. HP is targeting 3D printing in the commercial market and will be able to increase the speed of manufacturing; allowing more substrates.

“This technology will change the way manufacturing gets done and has the potential to impact many different industries such as aero-space and parts distribution,” he added.

Lastly, Bryant is very active in the Canadian IT community, sup-porting programs such as Green-4Good and the Channel Charity Golf tournament for the RCMP Foundation.

WITHIN A WEEK in January, Lenovo struck two major deals – one to acquire Motorola Mobility from Google and another to obtain the X86 server business from IBM.

These two deals created a stir within the channel community and left many questions. Ques-tions Lenovo senior executives are unable to answer until the end of the year when both officially closed.

Jay Parker, the president of Leno-vo North America, did his best to provide answers. Parker said that

#1LLOYD BRYANT General Manager, HP


#2JAY PARKER Lenovo President, North America


the acquisitions mean more oppor-tunity to the channel because they will expand Lenovo’s business.

“We can’t freely share what the other is doing. After day one we do need to have a crisp, clear strategy for what it means to the channel,” Parker said in a previ-ous interview.

Parker said Motorola and IBM will enable Lenovo to scale and address capability issues with the channel. What that looks like still needs to be determined, however. Parker did stress that when these deals do close the strategy will not be about harvesting or protecting channel margins and more about accelerating the growth opportu-nity these new product sets can have.

The company worked internally to get itself ready for Motorola Mobility and IBM’s x86 business, he said. One of the benefits Parker sees is that the two acquisitions are focused in North America. Both are based here, and both have sales and research and develop-ment organizations based in North America.

Approximately 7,500 employees will be transferring from IBM to Lenovo including sales people, product development teams and service and support professionals. Lenovo will also be getting 41 IBM facilities, of which 34 are R&D or sales offices. The remaining seven are manufacturing plants.

Darrell Ward, Lenovo’s server lead, said that if Lenovo had tried to build what IBM’s x86 business is today, it would take 10 years.

Currently, the x86 market is worth $9 billion.

Parker told CDN that the goal is for Lenovo to become the PC plus company in this geography. “We do sell servers, but we want to accelerate that and we want to be a player now. We feel confident on this. We have experience with this and with IBM. We know the cultures and the decisions we need to make.”

On the Motorola Mobility side. Parker called the company an iconic brand. What makes this ac-quisition interesting is that Lenovo, on its own, has sold 50 million smartphones in limited regions such as Russia and China. The Lenovo smartphone currently does not have a presence in the North American market.

Parker said that through the Mo-torola Mobility acquisition it will provide Lenovo the opportunity to bring a smartphone solution to the lucrative North American market.

“This allows us to be that PC plus player across the board. We want to be a company that can take you from the data centre to the pants pocket (smartphone). We have vision of being a great technology company and not just a great devices company.”

As an example, Parker said that Lenovo has the No. 1 most used app store in China over iTunes and iPlay. Lenovo recently created an app called ShareIt for tablets and mobile phones that has been downloaded more than 100 million times.

WHAT A YEAR One it was for Janet Kennedy, the president of Micro-soft Canada.

Since arriving in Canada she has brought stability to the role - some-thing that was lacking the past few years.

Kennedy told CDN in a previous interview that this is her “dream job.” As the face of Microsoft in Canada, Kennedy has one main mission: to transition Microsoft and its channel to the cloud.

After a full year on the job, the Purdue University graduate has worked through a litany of changes at the Canadian subsidiary. She told the Canadian partner ecosys-tem not to build solutions in a silo anymore and instead integrate big data, social, mobile and look for holistic solutions.

The big piece for most solution providers selling the Microsoft stack is that everyone will have a score card that will be based on cloud consumption in Azure and Office 365. The old licensing sales model will not be a factor anymore.

One of the key things is the bet-ter the performance with Azure and Office 365 the more likely Mi-crosoft will invest in your business.

Kennedy was also on hand for the opening of three Microsoft Stores. One in Toronto and the suburb of Mississauga, Ont., and another out west in Calgary.


#3JANET KENNEDY President, Microsoft Canada



But ribbon cutting was not her only task. Kennedy introduced a new strategy for the Internet of Things, wearables, partnering with NetApp on converged infrastruc-ture, revamped editions of Office 365 for SMB, Salesforce.com part-nership, Cortana, and Windows Phone for business.

Let’s not forgot the most ignored deadline in computing: the end of life of Windows XP on April 8 of this year.

Kennedy and the team at Micro-soft Canada did a full court press with the channel to get them ready even though possibly hundreds of millions of computers are believed to still be using the 13-year old operating system.

Maybe some of her best work was shielding the Canadian organi-zation from the massive 18,000 job cuts announced by new CEO Satya Nadella at the end of the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in Washington, D.C.

Finally, in honour of Interna-tional Women's Day, Kennedy was on hand to unveil a portrait showcasing 10 aspirational Ca-nadian women who have used Microsoft technology as part of their success.

IN PROBABLY THE most dramatic story of the year, the Royal Ca-nadian Mounted Police arrested

a 19-year-old man from London, Ont. who is believed to have used the Heartbleed computer bug to steal 900 social insurance numbers from the Canada Revenue Agency. This arrest only strengthened the Mounties' reputation of always get-ting their man.

The RCMP’s National Division Integrated Technological Crime Unit (ITCU) said its operatives picked up Stephen Arthuro Solis-Reyes at his residence on April 15. He now faces one count of Unau-thorized Use of Computer and one count of Mischief in Relation to Data.

“The RCMP treated this breach of security as a high priority case and mobilized the necessary resources to resolve the matter as quickly as possible. Investigators from National Division, along with counterparts in ‘O’ Division have been working tirelessly over the last four days analyzing data, follow-ing leads, conducting interviews, obtaining and executing legal authorization and liaising with our partners,” said Gilles Michaud, RCMP assistant commissioner.

Solis-Reyes is a second year computer science student at the University of Western Ontario (UWO) in London. His lawyer said Solis-Reyes surrendered peacefully to police.

The Heartbleed bug had a lasting impact on business. For example, The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) shut down parts of its Web site citing safety and security concerns just as the deadline to file returns was fast approaching.

The CRA admitted the site shut-down is related to the Heartbleed bug, which enables attackers to steal encrypted information from email and Web sites.

The shutdown came just two weeks before the April 30 tax deadline. More than 6.7 million taxpayers had already filed their tax returns online by March 24. That number represented almost 84 per cent of expected tax returns. Before the shutdown, it was estimated that nearly 2,000 returns were filed per minute through the site.

ERIC GALES HAS been in this posi-tion before with Microsoft and he returns this year, now running VMware Canada mainly thanks to EVO: Rail.

In a nutshell, EVO:Rail combines the vendor’s compute products, net-working, and storage resources into a hyper-converged infrastructure appliance. It’s an all-in-one solution but more importantly it’s a total channel play for VMware.

Another important factor is EVO:Rail is sort of the channel’s train ticket to the highly lucrative software-defined data centre be-cause of its scalability features and management tools for private and hybrid cloud environments.

With EVO:Rail VMware now has a converged systems solution that

#4RCMP Heartbleed Computer Bug Dramatic story of the year

#5ERIC GALES Country Manager, VMWare Canada



is affordable for the mid-market. VMware provides the software stack, while OEM hardware mak-ers provide the physical parts. And, there were plenty of vendors lining up to partner with VMware on EVO:Rail led by Dell and also EMC, Fujitsu, Inspur, Net One Systems Co. and Supermicro.

EVO:Rail is being billed by the company as a cornerstone to creat-ing a software-defined data centre. It will include VMware vSphere, Virtual SAN, and vendor Log In-sight. The appliance also includes a user interface for the purpose of created virtual machines, marrying them with the required associated networks and storage vaults.

What also makes EVO:Rail in-teresting is VMware’s go-to-market strategy. EVO:Rail has a franchise model instead of an OEM model. And, this is strategy Gales is intro-ducing to the Canadian market.

VMware says the benefits of the appliance as a quick way to build virtual machines, being able to scale up and add more virtual machines as needed, requiring zero downtime for VMware software updates, and simple virtual ma-chine lifecycle management.

While different partners are involved in selling the EVO:Rail hardware, all of them will be sticking to VMware’s recipe for the appliance. It will run dual six-core Intel Xeon E5 CPUs, up to 192 GB of memory, offer a mix of SSD and spinning disc storage, a dual power supply, and will offer 24 hot-swappable 2.5-inch drives.

EVO:Rail was a significant de-

velopment, but it wasn’t VMware’s only announcement. The company started the year with the AirWatch acquisition, they partnered with Google on a desktop-as-a-service solution, and released a cloud-based disaster recovery solution.

As for the channel, one of the biggest moves was working more with distributors for the software-defined enterprise opportunity.

“We see distribution as a key conduit as you can see they are in-vesting in VMware and support the channel ecosystem we have,” Gales said, in a previous interview.

Gales added that VMware is now providing channel opportunities to every partner type. “They are ask-ing us how to help them realize the market potential and it’s great to see that in distribution. They can advance it and we all benefit from the vendor down to the channel. I have not seen that level of focus in a long while and it’s going to provide a seismic opportunity in the market,” he said.

ADDITION BY SUBTRACTION was the name of the game for IBM in 2014. On one hand Big Blue divested it-self of the x86 business to Lenovo; then made historic partnership with Apple and Cisco Systems.

Caught in the middle of all this is 29-year IBM veteran, Marc Dupa-

quier who became IBM’s top man in the channel, replacing Mark Hennessy as general manager, IBM global business partners.

Dupaquier takes the channel helm at a time when IBM is in transition, divesting its x86 server business and maintaining a legacy in hardware while making a major shift around three key growth areas – cloud computing, mobility and engagement. Some partners are leaving IBM with the Lenovo deal, and others are wondering where they fit in the new IBM.

In Canada, IBM was chosen by Shared Services Canada to build a new data centre for the Cana-dian government. Dupaquier also opened up the SoftLayer opportu-nity for the channel as it will open a new Toronto data centre. All this occurred as Dan Fortin retired as IBM Canada president. He was replaced by Dave Liederbach on an interim basis.

IT’S GOOD TO have goals in the chan-nel. Mary Ann Yule’s goal was for CDW Canada to be the No. 1 Solu-tion Provider on CDN’s Top 100 list. And, in 2014, the GM of CDW Canada accomplished that goal.

When the Etobicoke, Ont.-based direct reseller first joined the CDN Top 100 in 2006, CDW was ranked number 13th. Since then, the com-

#6MARC DUPAQUIER Global Channel Chief IBM

#7MARY ANN YULE Vice-President and General Manager, CDW Canada


pany consistently moved up in the ranking, hitting the number two slot in 2012, noted award presenter Rick Reid, president of Tech Data Canada.

“There was nowhere else to go but number one,” he said as pre-pared to present the Top Solution Provider award to Mary Ann Yule, vice-president and general man-ager of CDW Canada.

CDW reported a revenue range of $475 million to $500 million. Yule said her company will keep on doing what works.

“We’ll continue to do what we do best, taking care of our custom-ers,” she said.

AFTER TURNING PRIVATE and im-plementing a Canada first strategy for Dell, what could Kevin Peesker, Dell Canada President, do for an encore in 2014?

Well how about setting a path for the vendor to enter the tier 2 chan-nel space with major partnership deals with Ingram Micro Canada, Tech Data Canada and to a lesser degree Synnex Canada. Synnex announced a partnership with Dell for the U.S. market but not yet in Canada.

This is a significant move by the once former direct-only vendor in its channel journey.

Going through tier 2 distribution

would have been Top 10 material on its own, but Dell also introduced a strategic alliance with virtual stor-age pioneer Nutanix specifically for its PowerEdge server line, which the company believes will give them a foothold in the software-defined networking space.

Dell also introduced its own cloud marketplace as well making a huge investment in the mobile Internet of Things. 2014 ended up being a year where you’d ask Dell “what didn’t they do.”

IF HP DID not split its company into two separate organizations then possibly Symantec's decision a week later to do basically the same thing might have moved Sean Forkan, the country manager for Symantec Canada up from the No. 9 spot where he sits now.

Besides timing, what made the Symantec split from its Norton divi-sion, remarkable was that the secu-rity vendor decided to partner with Hewlett-Packard to offer a disaster-recovery-as-a-service solution to be unveiled to the channel in mid-2015. Symantec plans to separate its organization into two independent companies; one concentrates on cy-ber security and the other will focus on information management.

Also in 2014 Symantec launched a new global channel strategy that saw

the vendor collapse some 20 part-ner programs, introducing 12 new competency levels for partners, and rolling out a new system for benefits and incentives that is based on com-petency and customer experience.

The new channel program was much needed and promises a clearer connection between part-ner performance, and competency and rewards.

INTEL CANADA COUNTRY manager Graham Palmer moves into the Top 10 from his No. 15 spot a year ago. It seemed that Palmer, in 2014, was on a one man crusade for the PC refresh.

PC refresh? Really, does that still happen anymore? Well there are currently 170 million desktop and laptop PCs that are four years old or worse in the North American marketplace.

That was one factoid Palmer tried to convey to the channel in 2014. He said the channel has great opportunity to drive another hardware refresh that goes beyond Windows XP.

Just in the server space alone, Palmer found that 32 per cent of the current install base around the world is four years or older. Collectively this group of servers consume approximately 65 per cent energy. “With a refresh these


#9SEAN FORKAN Vice-President and General Manager, Symantec Canada

#8KEVIN PEESKER President, Dell Canada

#10GRAHAM PALMER Country Manager, Intel Canada



customers can see huge energy saves and massive performance improvements,” he said in a previ-ous interview.

There is even innovation happen-ing in the desktop area. Palmer said that contrary to the market percep-tion of the desktop; “the desktop PC is not dying.” There are four areas of growth within desktops and all based on new types of form factors such as the MiniDT, All-in-Ones, portable All-in-Ones and the gaming enthusiast segment.

“The channel needs to integrate with desktops to bring in this new opportunity to change the conver-sation especially in the MiniDT segment,” Palmer said.

YOU CAN ALWAYS count on Cisco Systems to define a new computing term each year. In 2014, the channel was introduced to the Intercloud.

Cisco embarking on an ambitious project in 2014; to build the world’s largest global Intercloud that will cost approximately $1 billion and will take two years to roll-out. The Inter-cloud is an open network of clouds that will feature APIs for application development and a new line of cloud services for the channel.

Taking the lead on the Intercloud is Canadian Rob Lloyd, president of development and sales for Cisco. He told CDN this year that Inter-

cloud marks the second phase of the company’s strategy to become the No. 1 vendor in hybrid cloud. The Cisco Intercloud will be unique in that it will try to leverage public clouds such as Amazon, Google and the Microsoft Azure cloud.

One of the key points of dif-ferentiation for the Intercloud is scalability and full compliance with local data sovereignty laws. Some of the challenges Cisco looks to ad-dress with the Intercloud revolves around too many workloads being put on personal credit cards.

WITH DELL ANNOUNCING distribu-tion deals with Tech Data, Synnex and Ingram Micro it would be remiss of CDN not to include the distie heads on the Top 25 News-makers’ list.

But Mark Snider, the president of Ingram Micro Canada pointed out to CDN that Ingram was the first of the major three distributors to ink Dell in a deal.

By signing the biggest distributors in the marketplace Dell signals it is motivated to acquire more solution providers. According to sources, Dell Canada has roughly 1,000 Canadian solution providers and they have attained them mostly through Dell Partner Direct channel program announced back in 2007 when the Austin, Tex.-based computing giant

changed its culture of direct selling to embrace the channel.

A high percentage of those chan-nel partners are direct to reseller relationships and Ingram Micro Canada president Mark Snider told CDN that this is a new model for Dell in Canada. “The pickup has been strong for Dell and it’s because they are serious about going after channel partners who have not sold Dell before. This is a new model for the company and they are very seri-ous about it,” Snider said.

YOU COULD NOT ignore the buzz around software-defined network and storage in 2014. But in the same breath when customers and channel partners began to discuss vendor options the name Nutanix surfaced over and over again.

Some of those discussions admittedly described Nutanix as an ankle bitter to the big vendor players. Most of the time, however, Nutanix was talked up as a serious contender in the marketplace.

And, then the July 24th partner-ship deal with Dell happened. Dell and Nutanix were now going to build out Web-scale converged infrastructure solutions for soft-ware-defined storage. After July 24, everyone starting taking Nutanix seriously.

Then Anton Granic, Nutanix

#11ROB LLOYD President, Development and Sales, Cisco Intercloud

#12MARK SNIDER General Manager Ingram Micro Canada

#13ANTON GRANIC Director, Nutanix Canada



Canada’s senior director for the Canadian operation began win-ning over the channel community by making it clear the company’s go to market business model is 100 per cent channel friendly.

Granic added that he refuses to take deals direct. But there is more to Nutanix’s channel strategy than just its anti-direct philosophy.

Granic was also instrumental in signing agreements with Ingram Micro Canada, Arrow and Avnet Canada to build out its channel partner network.

LAST YEAR CDN named outgoing BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins the top newsmaker of the year. For 2014, John Sims, the president of global enterprise services for the Waterloo, Ont.-based smartphone vendor makes the list at No. 14.

Sims developed a channel part-ner strategy of sorts for the com-pany. Sims said the company will focus on the enterprise market by exploiting its strength in security.

BlackBerry is building out a channel strategy that focuses on solution provider partners who have vertical industry expertise or serve large industry segments. Another aspect of the partner plan is to work with existing channel partners of vendors such as SAP and Salesforce.com.

Sims is a former SAP executive and the SAP partnership will see the suite of SAP Fiori apps on BlackBerry devices deployed by channel partners. SAP Fiori apps are frequently used SAP software functions that work across a desk-top PC, a tablet and a smartphone.

SOMETIMES THE BEST deals you make are the ones you don’t. In 2014, the world learned that for nearly a year EMC was engaged in merger discussions with HP. Can you imagine EMC Canada GM Mi-chael Sharun reporting to Lloyd Bry-ant of HP or the other way around?

Sharun did not have to deal with that in 2014, but he did have to work on several new initiatives such as a seven-year maintenance price program for XtremIO, of-fering price protection for flash storage solutions, and taking VMax from a premium product to a value product for the channel. And with that, VMax came with a new aggressive pricing strategy - some-thing that EMC has historically been reluctant to do.

Maybe the most significant news for EMC channel partners was the vendor re-architecting its channel program that would include fed-eration companies VMware, RSA, EMC II (Information Infrastruc-ture) and Pivotal.

Let’s not forget EMC’s million dollar flash guarantee. The Hop-kinton, Mass.-based vendor will pay $1 million to the first customer of an of an XtremIO all-flash array who can prove the system’s inline data services have switched off or have throttled back to a default state. So far no one has come for-ward to claim the prize.

THERE WAS A lot of chatter on wearable technology in 2014. In fact, CDN thought about making it its own story for the 25th Spot. I won’t ruin the suspense for you as you still have to check out No. 25 to see what Top Story made the list this year.

But while technology vendors talked about wearables Samsung may have been the only major ven-dor to release wearables into the market on a semi-regular fashion. You have to give credit to James Politeski, Samsung Canada presi-dent for making wearables a prior-ity for the company in Canada.

Case in point: Samsung Canada’s new Gear S wearable will allow users to do more, even when they’re not tethered to their smartphone.

The Gear S was one of many wearables from Samsung’s Gear line. The Gear S features a new curved design and 3G connectiv-ity and new functionality for users,

#14JOHN SIMS President, Global Enterprise, BlackBerry

#16JAMES POLITESKI President, Samsung Canada

#15MICHAEL SHARUN General Manager, EMC Canada


whether they’re connected to their smartphones or not.

One of the main things that make many smartwatches not so smart is that they need to be paired with a mobile phone in order for its user to receive and make calls.

RICK REID, president of Tech Data Canada, orchestrated another major deal with Dell paving the way for the vendor to enter the tier 2 channel.

The Dell deal was significant from an industry-wide perspective, but from an internal perspective Reid’s decision to create a new business unit that would combine mobility and retail might end up, long-term to be what he will be remembered for in 2014.

Reid went and hired Wendy Franklin, a 16-year veteran of the channel, away from rival Ingram Micro Canada to drive this new division. Franklin and Reid worked together to plan out the strategy for the new mobility division.

Also in 2014, Reid was instru-mental in bringing Tech Data’s StreamOne platform for cloud and software-as-a-service to Canada.

Wrapping up the year, Tech Data Canada launched a new market-ing service in response to the need among small and medium-sized businesses in the channel for more

marketing services. Called resellerCONNECT, the

program aims to better spend a company’s marketing dollars and will target those in the channel who already have established commerce relationships that Tech Data.

SCOTT BRADLEY, Huawei Canada’s vice-president of corporate and government affairs, brought the news that surprised many in the Canadian channel community.

Huawei Technologies would be increasing its investment in Ontar-io - in hopes that it will persuade enterprises to buy its switches and routers - to the tune of $210 mil-lion in new investments that will create 325 new jobs over the next five years. When combined with existing research, development and operational plans, Huawei’s total investment in Ontario over the next five years will be $500 million.

“We hope that this type of com-mitment to our operations rein-forces that we’re here to stay in Canada,” Bradley said in a previ-ous interview.

Huawei opened its Canadian of-fice in 2008, around the time BCI Inc.’s Bell Canada and Telus began buying switches for their wireless networks. Later it sold equipment to Wind Mobile and SaskTel.

Huawei is also working with a

number of Canadian Universities on 5G related research projects.

IN THE MOST heartwarming story of the year, distributor D&H Canada and its association with the Con-nected North program spear-headed by Cisco Canada, supplied interactive video conferencing and collaboration tools to connect stu-dents in remote northern Aborigi-nal and Inuit communities with other students, instructors, subject matter experts and even healthcare practitioners across Canada.

Greg Tobin, general manager of D&H Canada, said the organiza-tion went out of its comfort zone to make Connected North happen for so many people who are not af-forded the same level of education as the rest of Canadians.

“Our involvement was not about technology,” said Tobin in a previ-ous interview. “We didn’t install or provide any equipment for this project.”

Instead, he said, D&H assumed the role of conducting fundraising and awareness activities in support of the program and to sponsor a Connected North installation in a particular school, the Aqsarniit Middle School in Iqaluit, Nunavut. This included reaching out to its network of some 4,000 reseller part-ners, collecting donations during the


#17RICK REID President, Tech Data

#19GREG TOBIN General Manager, D&H Canada

#18SCOTT BRADLEY Vice-President of Corporate Government Affairs, Huawei


company’s recent Montreal Technol-ogy Show and providing signage and informative video clips explaining how the program benefits students in Canada’s northern territory.

IN 2014 CITRIX Canada country manager Michael Murphy had to deal with an important part-ner shift the parent company was insisting on.

Citrix Systems wanted its chan-nel partners to move away from tactical selling to a more strategic approach. Citrix announced plenty of incentives to help move this shift alone such as new promos, insight into the vendor’s product roadmap, new certifications and insight into the company’s strategic direction.

Getting the channel on the same page as Citrix was a task Murphy accepted and he brought about more importance on the channel internally at Citrix Canada. The plan moved away from strict prod-uct reselling to helping the channel partner identify opportunities at each stage of the customer life-cycle, from desktop virtualization to cloud services to mobility.

Also in 2014 Citrix announced a product suite that melds its tech-nologies and services together, allowing customers to securely access their files on any device,

over any network. It also launched a new cloud-based platform for its partners and customers, giving them the power to design and build their own mobile workspaces.

Finally the company released XenMobile 9, which now features military-grade encryption of the data stored on corporate smart-phones.

DAVID DE ABREU, Cisco Canada channel chief implemented a “Made in Canada” configuration plan for its Business Edition 6000 collabora-tion system that will leverage distri-bution facilities for increased speed to market for the channel.

According to De Abreu, this plan is being called “Made in Canada” because it was developed internally at the subsidiary by Rod Scotland, the national architecture strategy lead, and Canadian mid-market solutions for Cisco Canada.

The Made in Canada plan has three key distribution partners Tech Data Canada, Ingram Micro and Comstor providing a base-level configuration for the Cisco Busi-ness Edition 6000.

The BE 6000 is suited for cus-tomers with 1,000 employees and offerings voice, video, mobility, messaging, conferencing and in-stant messaging on a single server platform. The product is built on

Cisco’s Unified Computing Sys-tems running Intel Xeon proces-sors in a one rack unit.

“The focus for Cisco Canada in FY14 was to intensify the mid-market space through distribution as much as possible. We want to leverage their skills sets the idea is to remove the day-to-day common base configuration challenge,” De Abreu said, in a previous interview.

AVAYA CANADA PRESIDENT Ross Pellizzari always wanted a segmen-tation approach to the Canadian market. Well, in 2014 he got his wish.

“Since I started at Avaya Canada I wanted to adopt a segmenta-tion model to get more granular. These moves are more of a tune-up in terms of our go-to-market with segmentation. I now have the cavalry in place,” Pellizzari said in a previous interview.

The cavalry brought about many changes to Avaya’s Canadian team, the biggest of which saw Renzo Di-Pasquale leave the channel to run the enterprise business. Replacing him was Miles Davis.

But maybe the boldest part of this strategy was when he put a stop to service providers, namely Bell, Telus and Allstream dictat-ing terms and conditions of deals. Pellizzari described the changes


#20MICHAEL MURPHY President, Citrix Canada

#21DAVE DE ABREU Channel Chief Cisco Canada

#21ROSS PELLIZZARI President Avaya Canada


this way: “If a service provider does not want to use Avaya tech-nology for let’s say a cloud solution then it’s opened up to the entire channel. If a Telco does not want an Avaya solution for a particular segment of the market; the channel partners can go in and sell there too with the help of distribution.”

DATA SOVEREIGNTY WAS an on-go-ing issue in 2014 not just for chan-nel partners but also customers.

Customers often worry about the U.S. using the Patriot Act, which gives law enforcement agencies the right to subpoena data.

Bob Elliott, president of SAP Canada, decided to actually do something about it by working to-wards SAP Canada operating its own data centre north of Toronto that is intended to assure organizations per-sonal data won’t leave the country.

“It’s an emotional thing that I don’t even think makes sense when you’re connected to the Internet,” said Elliott, in a previous interview.

“It comes up time and time again, especially in the public sector and in the financial/bank-ing sector that they really want to know if they move to the cloud their data will be housed in a Canadian data centre.” British Co-lumbia has mandated that service providers handling provincial data

store it within Canada, he added.The other reason SAP will have a

data centre here is that demand for the company’s cloud-based appli-cations is increasing.

First to be available by the end of the year will be SAP’s SuccessFac-tors human resources suite, fol-lowed later by the Ariba business-to-business d procurement service and HANA Enterprise Cloud.

MARCEL ESCORCIO DELIVERED Hi-tachi Data Systems (HDS) Cana-da's cloud message for the channel in a very unique place in 2014; an airplane hangar. The company released three new products that are part of its Continuous Cloud Infrastructure platform.

Escorcio made available HDS’s Virtual Storage Platform G1000 and announced the Storage Vir-tualization Operating System (SVOS) along with a new version of the Hitachi Command Suite management platform.

If that wasn’t enough the region-al vice president and GM of HDS Canada added new enhancements to its Unified Compute Platform converged portfolio.

Escorcio conservatively esti-mated that these new products could touch thousands of channel partners.

He added that the business

demands in Canada are changing. This new platform is a heteroge-neous solution for SMBs managed with one software suite, ensuring cost savings.

SVOS is a standalone storage vir-tualization operating system that provides a common architecture that can go across all platforms, including a software-defined data centre. SVOS will feature flash op-timization, automated tiering and non-disruptive data migration.

THE TOP STORY of this year’s Newsmakers list well could have been last year's. The channel and all of society cannot deny the overwhelming momentum of the Internet of Things.

If you believe Cisco's financial logic to IoT (and many do) this market grew in nine months from a $14.5 trillion worldwide profit and economic savings opportunity in the next decade to a $19 trillion one. For Canada it grew from $400 billion to half a trillion dollars in the same time. Yes, that’s not a typo. We really mean “trillion.”

Lending more credibility to the vast market potential of the Inter-net of Things is Microsoft Corp. who is signing up with the AllSeen Alliance this year, a wide-ranging open-source Internet of Everything project.


#22BOB ELLIOTT Managing Director, SAP Canada

#25THE INTERNET OF THINGS Top story of the year

#24MARCEL ESCORCIO Vice-President and General Manager, HDS Canada

EDITORIALEDITOR Paolo Del Nibletto

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NEW YORK – SAP CEO Bill Mc-Dermott at the SME Summit made his case for SAP being a small-to-mid-size enterprise company instead of a software vendor only interested in large Global 2000 organizations.

During his keynote address, McDermott made a compelling case saying that of the more than 260,000 SAP customers, approxi-mately 80 per cent are SME. The company is also addressing its channel direction to include the SME market opportunity. SAP has approximately 11,900 solution provider partners worldwide and he expects this group to triple in size in the future.

But, that wasn’t the only thing on McDermott’s mind during the SME Summit. McDermott has written a book titled “Win-ners Dream”. The book, he says, contains a lot of business and life strategy lessons from his own ca-reer highs and lows.

This is what McDermott, a Long Island native, had to say about the Internet of Things…

“The world is going to be more mobile and the Internet of Things will double data every 18 months. This needs to be managed in a social way on the cloud.”

McDermott on talent…

“Companies spend time on strate-gy, but leaders spend most of their time with people. Without people a company is just a building.”

McDermott on the complexity of technology…

“Complexity is the enemy of busi-ness. We have not used technology to create a frictionless system to connect one-on-one with people.”

McDermott on leadership…

“Leaders have to listen and some of it you don’t want to hear, but that is where change comes from.”

18

QUESTION & ANSWERCLOSE-UP

December/January 2014 computerdealernews.com

SAP CEO Bill McDermott’s Viewpoints on…

Tablets over PCs for the mobile worker

Steve Conaby President

CONPUTE Corporation

Channel executives face o� over tablets vs. notebooks at the CDN Channel Debate. What makes the mobile worker more

productive? This is your peer group who understands business and how to solve customer pain points with IT. Don’t miss it.

Rick Jordan Vice President, Strategic Alliances,

Tenet Computer Group Inc.

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Channel Executives facing-o� over the issues that a� ect the Canadian IT Channel

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